The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, made this known on Monday, September 5, 2016 while speaking at the national nutrition week in Abuja.

She said: “The 2017 budget that is currently being drawn also has a clear commitment to continue with all of the social intervention programmes that have started in 2016 and the school feeding programme is a significant component of it.

ALSO READ:

“In the 2017 budget, the Federal Government is also putting aside N500bn for social intervention programmes just as we did in 2016.”

She added that while it would be difficult for the government alone to address issues on malnutrition, owing to funding constraints, it would use the instrumentality of the budget in channelling funds to the intervention programme.

The proposal sums up a total of N1tn spent on social intervention programme in the spate of two years. For the 2016 budget, N500bn had been earlier proposed and approved for the same purpose.